Released 911 Call Captures Hero Father Confronting Oregon School Shooter

A father’s desperate choice at Silver Rail Elementary

Kaylub Giamanco, a 36-year-old carpenter and military veteran, told a 911 dispatcher he would shoot a gunman “right now if I have to” just moments before rushing into an Oregon elementary school to stop a deadly rampage. The recording of that call, released Tuesday, captures the frantic seconds during the October 15 shooting at Silver Rail Elementary School in Bend, Oregon, where Giamanco’s own daughters were attending class.

Released 911 Call Captures Hero Father Confronting Oregon School Shooter — Photo: cnn.com

The audio reveals a man caught between the instinct to wait for law enforcement and the immediate terror of hearing gunfire near his children. As CBS News reported, the 80-second recording begins with Giamanco’s initial shock—”Oh my God”—as he realized a shooter was at his daughters’ school. While the dispatcher attempted to plead with him to stay put and wait for officers, Giamanco’s resolve was set. “I’m about to go kill this kid,” he told the operator, according to the New York Post.

This moment of decision came after a series of harrowing observations. Giamanco, who was driving home for lunch, witnessed the shooter, 16-year-old Griffin J. John II, throw a shotgun over the school fence before climbing over it himself. In an exclusive interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting, Giamanco described a state of pure panic, noting that he reached for a handgun he kept in his truck’s center console as he saw the weapon being discarded.

The timeline of the Silver Rail tragedy

The violence unfolded with terrifying speed on the afternoon of October 15. According to reports from the New York Post, the 16-year-old shooter used a shotgun, which he had taken from his mother, to blast his way through locked doors. The attack targeted a special needs classroom, where the shooter killed three children, ages 5, 8, and 11, and a 25-year-old teacher. One additional student was critically wounded, and another teacher sustained injuries during the breach.

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Giamanco’s intervention occurred as the situation reached a breaking point inside the building. He described how he used his military training to “Army crawl” through the school, hearing the pleas of children and the sound of gunfire. When he reached the special education classroom, he saw a staff member struggling to defend against the shooter. Giamanco fired his weapon, hitting John multiple times. He told Oregon Public Broadcasting that he fired additional shots to ensure the gunman could not move, fearing he might target anyone else.

The response from local authorities was swift but arrived just after the violence had peaked. Police entered the building at 1:02 p.m., approximately four minutes after the shooter was first spotted at the fence and two minutes after Giamanco’s emergency call. By the time officers arrived, the gunman was dead.

Category	Details
Date of Incident	October 15, 2026
Location	Silver Rail Elementary School, Bend, Oregon
Perpetrator	Griffin J. John II, age 16

The heavy toll of survival

While Giamanco is being hailed as a hero for preventing further loss of life, the emotional weight of the afternoon remains immense. He has struggled with the reality that his intervention, while stopping the shooter, could not undo the deaths of the four victims. In his conversation with Oregon Public Broadcasting, he expressed a haunting sense of incompletion, stating, “I didn’t save everybody. I didn’t get them all.”

Oregon shooting call comp — Photo: nypost.com

The psychological impact of the event is profound. Giamanco reported that the experience keeps him awake at night, as he continues to relive the screams and the faces of those involved. The shooter, identified by Bend Police Chief Mike Krantz as a former special needs student at the school, had bypassed security by firing into the glass panes of external doors before entering.

Hero in deadly Oregon elementary school shooting is Kaylub Giamanco, father of 2 students

The incident has reignited the broader, often polarized, national conversation regarding school safety and the role of armed citizens in active shooter scenarios. Critics of civilian intervention often point to the danger of untrained individuals entering a chaotic scene, potentially complicating police response or causing accidental harm. Conversely, proponents argue that in the narrow window of an active shooting, every second counts, and Giamanco’s actions directly prevented the death toll from rising higher. Whether the focus shifts toward increased school security measures or the complexities of mental health support for former students, the community in Bend is left to navigate a landscape of grief and unanswered questions about how such a breach was possible.

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